Human Resources: Class and Cannibalism in Herrick’s “The Hock-Cart”

Herrick’s “The Hock-Cart, or Harvest Home: To the Right Honourable, Mildmay, Earle of Westmorland” was composed at a time when unpropertied rural laborers it depicts were facing unprecedented economic hardship—years which one historian has described as “probably most terrible … through country ever passed.” It is often noted that final lines poem give an unusually frank glimpse their disempowered state, but this normally seen no more than jarring note in otherwise reaffirms and celebrates harmony relations with benevolent landlord. On closer reading, however, unsettling close appears merely culmination undercurrents running throughout poem. Beneath surface celebration, its deeply conservative implications, runs somber critique socioeconomic injustice oppression, draws on traditions political protest stretching from Old Testament to contemporary pamphleteers. As well revealing artistry ambivalent sustains two incompatible perspectives, reading prompts further reflection sense his own position, relationship wealthy patron, constraints purposes lyric composition. [S.P.]